Case Number 09382

DATE MOVIE: UNRATED EDITION

The Charge

Funny "ha-ha" or funny "I didn't blow my brains out all over
the sofa?"

Opening Statement

The latest in a line of rapid-fire spoof movies, Date Movie lampoons
recent romantic comedies in hopes of eliciting a mere chuckle -- or perhaps a
snort -- from you, the hapless audience. Good luck with all that.

Facts of the Case

Our story involves Julia Jones (Alyson Hannigan, American Pie), a
big-boned redhead, desperate to find herself a man. But her unflattering
physique has kept her from pursuing the guy of her dreams, Grant (Adam
Campbell). But after a meeting with relationship dynamo Hitch (Tony Cox) and a
visit to a custom auto body shop, she emerges a sleeker woman, and quickly
garners the attention of her main squeeze.

The two embark on their romance, and what unfurls is a series of parodies
from movies like Meet the Parents, Meet the Fockers, The
Wedding Planner, and probably a few more romantic comedies I didn't
recognize. Fred Willard and Jennifer Coolidge show up, too.

Then some other stuff happens and none of it is remotely funny. The end.

The Evidence

If I can manage to convince just five of you to avoid this movie like it was
a carrier of the bird flu, then I would have exceeded my expectation of doing
good works on this planet. Date Movie is one of the worst films I have
ever endured, and that is not hyperbole. There are bad movies. There are
horrible wastes of time. There are head-scratchingly awful projects that you
have no idea how they got green-lit. If these descriptions reside on a sliding
spectrum, Date Movie's classification far, far, far outruns them. I don't
have the words or the creative energy to succinctly label its degree of
putridity.

Date Movie is bad in a malicious way. It is a parasitic organism,
sapping away your life for 80 minutes and giving you in return nothing but the
humorless conceits of people who think a cat farting for two minutes straight is
comic gold.

Normally I try to see the silver lining in sub-par movies. But it's not
going to happen in this review. I resent this movie. Deeply. I hate that the
main emotion it evoked from me was embarrassment -- shame directed at everyone
involved with this cinematic clot and the besmirching it will most surely put on
every one of their future job applications.

"So, Mr. Campbell, we were all set to hire you for that part-time
chum shoveling job, but we noticed you were in Date Movie. Sorry, we've
given the job to a pedophilic wino. That movie f***ing sucked."

The jokes not only fail, but fail in spectacular,
space-time-continuum-shredding fashion. And it's not necessarily individual gags
that misfire (which they all do), but the basic premise of what
"parody" means. Scenes from popular films are "spoofed," but
the fatal mistake that the writers have made is that they recreated the scenes
almost to a T, throwing in a minor twist at the end. For example, in the
extended Meet the Parents riff, we go through that whole cat-milking
routine, the payoff being Julia's father lifting his shirt showing eight nipples
and delivering the parodied movie's punch-line verbatim: "Can you milk
me?" This is typical of the satire throughout the entire movie, from an
excruciatingly long Kill Bill take-off to even more Meet the
Parents and Meet the Fockers scenes (again, done just like they were
in the real film, just with a few stabs at jokes). Then there's the opening bit
with Mad TV's Josh Myers doing a Napoleon Dynamite impersonation that
your local neighborhood kid does just as well. (The joke, there? Myers is
wearing a shirt that says "Don't Vote for Pedro." Get it?
"Don't Vote for Pedro!")

All that's happening here is that Date Movie constantly draws
attention to two things: 1) there is not a nano-liter of original humor to be
found so the filmmakers had to reside to cheap shot pop culture gags and, 2)
we're reminded that the parodied movies are infinitely funnier than spoofs.
Dudes, parodying comedies just doesn't work!

Look, that's all I want to write about the substance of the movie. Just stay
the hell away, okay? Date Movie is like that poorly shaven idiot from
your freshman dorm who thought he was the funniest guy ever because he could
recite lines from Monty Python and the Holy Grail and all you really
wanted to do was kick him in the throat with a steel-toed Timberland.

The DVD presentation, though, isn't half bad. The technical bases are
covered, with a 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer that's clean and robust
and the 5.1 Dolby Digital mix is loud, though it does of course provide the
vehicle for delivery of the horrible jokes, so screw you Dolby.

In the bonus barrel, you get three commentary tracks, a cynical, almost
melancholy effort by writers Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg, another from
cast members Alyson Hannigan, Adam Campbell, Sophie Monk, and, finally,
something I've never seen before, a commentary featuring critics Scott Foundas
and Bob Strauss just ripping on the film. That last one is dubbed an
"anti-commentary;" it's quite impressive to see this feature included
as these two guys are merciless. In fact, the cast members seem like the only
commentators not about to eat a bullet. The rest of the extras: some unfunny
deleted scenes, some unfunny parodies of Peter Jackson's production diaries,
some pointless featurettes (Date Movie in six minutes? I wish), and
throwaway bits like a trivia game, auditions, and screensavers.

Closing Statement

I managed a chortle just once in this whole, dreary affair. It happens in the
beginning, when Hannigan is dancing around in a fat suit on the street and a
terrified construction worker points a nail gun to his head and pulls the
trigger. It was amusing at the time because I thought "Who would ever do
that because they were watching something horrible?" Now it's the most
realistic thing I have ever seen in a movie.

The Verdict

Guilty. Lock its ass up in a box full of spiders and starving hyenas, blast
it with napalm, and airlift it to a volcano for immediate disposal.